FEATURED ARTICLES ABOUT CREATIVITY - PAGE 2

John Livien is a rocker on the edge - of jumping onto the charts and off the roof. The darkly charismatic front man of a Beatles-like trio, Livien (Jason Behr) is consumed with John Lennon. So much so that his droll band mates worry that John, who sports wire-frame specs and affects a Liverpool accent, actually believes he's the reincarnation of the late Beatle. A hypnotic portrait of an almost-famous artist, Shooting Livien is alert to how creation and self-destruction go hand in glove.

Italo Scanga's exhibition at Larry Becker consists of something new and something old. The new work is a series of seven welded sculptures constructed from old tools and mechanical implements such as wrenches, sewing machines and bolt-cutters. The old work is a group of 42 small drawings made on the backs of food-can labels between 1965 and 1973. Together the sculptures and drawings bracket Scanga's omnivorous creative method. The drawings, hung low on the wall, are diaristic and notational - so much so that they're very difficult to read.

Every cook should come with a warranty against burnout, because sooner or later, it'll hit us all. Any career is vulnerable to the doldrums after 10 or 15 years, so the home cook who has prepared 20 meals a week for 20 years is certainly cooking on borrowed time. Is it any wonder that "What's for dinner?" has become the death knell of culinary creativity? Files of untried recipes and shelves of unopened cookbooks testify to our good intentions, but after a decade or two of uneaten experiments, most of us settle on 10 or so well-tested dishes that have proved themselves acceptable to our families and friends.

You aren't a famous novelist. You don't have paintings for sale in hip galleries. And no one - except close family members - wants to look at your etchings. Can you still call yourself creative? Probably. Being creative doesn't necessarily mean that you're on the New York Times bestseller list or that your artwork is in great demand. The problem with Americans, say creativity experts, is that our definition of creative is very narrow. "My definition of creativity is this: If anything is in existence today that only came into existence because of you - that's a creative act," said Pat James, a former college English instructor who teaches classes in creativity at the Jung Center in Altamonte Springs, Fla. "If you invent a new filing system, that's creativity.

A kid raised in a blue-collar home in Los Angeles, who got into trouble in school, who managed to scrape his way into an acting and directing career, and then went on to create a world-renowned film festival that changed the fortunes of independent filmmakers . . . . . . Even a person like that, even a person like Robert Redford, can screw it up. Redford's faults: hiring badly, impatience, inability to communicate, ineffective relations with...

The Spiral Q Theater puts a new spin on parades Saturday at the eighth annual Peoplehood parade and pageant. Traditional floats are replaced with at least 150 puppets large and small. Visitors can watch creativity and diversity in motion as more than 300 people from Philadelphia communities lead a parade beginning at the Paul Robeson House (50th and Walnut Streets) and ending at Clark Park (45th and Kingsessing). This giant-puppet parade and pageant, one of six produced yearly by the theater, was created "to mobilize communities and illuminate the victories, frustrations and possibilities of living in the neighborhoods of Philadelphia and similar urban settings through the construction of full-scale giant puppet parades, toy theater and neighborhood pageantry," the theater's mission.

Inside the Center for Engineering Education and Research at Villanova University on Thursday, the tools in use included toilet-paper rolls, tissue boxes, Popsicle sticks, and glitter glue. Some of the school's biggest brainiacs wore headpieces fashioned from pipe cleaners while they sang a children's song. The goal was to encourage free-spirited creativity among a group traditionally boxed in by methodology and math. And, just possibly, to inspire the next Steve Jobs - whoever he or she might be. As the world absorbed the news of the death Wednesday of Apple Inc.'s cofounder, and wondered what would become of the U.S. technology sector without Jobs' extraordinary vision, Villanova's College of Engineering spent two hours trying to get 28 sophomores to think more like Jobs and less like engineers.

When Supermarkets General realized that shoplifting was eating into its profits, the company did what any company would: It called in an expert. But rather than turn to the police, the grocery chain went creative. That is, it brought in Double Dominance, a small creativity-consulting firm in Maple Shade, N.J., to teach its employees to solve the problem themselves. Stephen Grossman, founder and sole full-time practitioner at the firm, makes his living by showing corporations how to tap their potential for problem-solving and innovation.

Judges at the Coatesville pumpkin-decorating contest on Saturday certainly had their work cut out for them. About a dozen children at the Oak Street public housing project in Coatesville decorated the pumpkins, which were donated by local grocery stores. Kmart donated gift certificates as prizes for those who created the scariest pumpkins. Not every face was frightening, however. Some were quite lovely. Ten-year-old Erica London drew a spiky hairdo and a beauty mark on her friend Bernice Henderson's pumpkin.

One of the greatest aspects of Philadelphia's down-to-earth sophistication is its ability - with an abundance of affordable real estate and fresh talent - to perpetually offer opportunities for ambitious young restaurateurs to make their own space. The BYOB revolution was a product of this, as is the recent gastropub craze. And it's been a boon to the city's neighborhood dining scene, which has grown organically, often on a few shoestrings, and frequently with endearingly quirky character.